


21

by lora3210



Category: ATEEZ (Band)
Genre: ATEEZ - Freeform, Alternate Universe - College/University, Bullying, Crushes, Eventual Happy Ending, Healing Choi Jongho, Kang Yeosang Likes The Seasoned Spicy Chicken, Love Confessions, M/M, Misunderstandings, POV Choi Jongho, Stories about their 21, jongsang, quarrel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-18
Updated: 2020-08-18
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:07:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25945585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lora3210/pseuds/lora3210
Summary: At the age of 21, the age of the escape from 'the poor first adult' but not of the maturity, Jongho starts to have his own secret crush on Yeosang.
Relationships: Choi Jongho/Kang Yeosang
Comments: 2
Kudos: 31





	21

**Author's Note:**

> * Sunbae : A Korean term which means senior or elder.  
> motive : DEAN - 21 (<https://youtu.be/DzseXHoXNtc>)

Even if a person had told me that I would fall in love with someone, I would not have thought that who I'd love could be Kang Yeosang.

21, an age of the escape from 'the poor first adult' but still not of maturity. At that age, perhaps because of a spring breeze that had made some people feel warm and a little excited, I started to have my own secret crush on Yeosang like being tumbled down to an unexpected deep hole. 

Well, had God dug it until I fell down there? If so, I'd like to pray to him for making Yeosang love me as well, one day in the near future.

People around Yeosang, regardless of their sex, were like wild animals that had been hiding in a group of shrubs to hunt their only one prey, Yeosang's heart. Among them, what could I be likened to? Sometimes my friends would call me a big brown bear with tremendous power. But the bear with a big body can't hide in shrubs. Maybe that's a kind of metaphor about why I can't easily hide my feeling to him.

I couldn't hide my feeling to him. So, I decided not to hide my heart.

'Handsome', 'Pretty', or 'Beautiful.' These words were what Yeosang has heard too often. If I had said one or all of them to him, I might have been about the 100th person who'd given such a run-of-the-mill compliment to him. 

What is the most creative way to praise his unrealistic beauty? Unfortunately, I couldn't figure it out. Even I could gather all the symbols of beauty such as a flower, spring sunshine, a butterfly, the clear sky, a cute cat or a pretty dog, a little bird, a fancy rainbow after the rain, Apollo or Aphrodite, or whatever, I thought all these symbols were also commonplace.

Instead, what I told him was, "If I were to be your girlfriend, I would love your pureness inside first, rather than your appearance."

I knew some people who once had him in a part of their heart focused on just his beautiful appearance that resembles a Greek sculpture, not his character and his inner side that is almost like an innocent child. How could I know? Some of my friends did. Even a few of them didn't believe that he's never been in a relationship with someone. "Oh, that's impossible. Don't be fooled by that pretended innocence. He must have been making many girlfriends." 

I thought that sort of boys or girls were never the deserving ones. If there's nobody to see the real side of him, by saying something different from a common compliment, I wanted to be the one who cares Yeosang's inner side, unlike the people just liking his appearance.

When I said like that, he replied with a smile of a little embarrassment, "But I want to be a cool and smart person. Some friends are worried that I'm too naive."

"But, I love that naivety. I love your all." At the moment I said it, I carefully wiped out with my thumb a trace of a spicy sauce on one edge of his lips. He must have eaten a seasoned spicy chicken because it is one of his favorite foods. "Oh, thanks." "You're welcome." I licked my thumb lightly, soundlessly engraving inside my heart the moment of his smile that fell on my retina. 

Well, even though I said something close to love confession, he seemed not to notice how much I love him.

 _Don't be fooled by that pretended innocence._ Oh, it was really sorry for her not to find out what is the real thing. There's no such a thing that could be labeled 'pretended' or 'false' in his attitude, behavior, and thoughts. He is, as he said, so naive and innocent that he can be compared with 6 or 7-year-old kids in a kindergarten. No matter how a thing is trivial, he knows how to cherish it. For instance, when I brought to him a wildflower blooming on the street, instead of throwing it out somewhere, he kept it between leaves of his textbook. "Thanks. I'll coat it to make a bookmark." 

The other day, I could be watching him feeding a street cat and stroking its fur as carefully and softly as possible. Staring at the way he's doing, one thought came up in my mind. How many times has his heart been hurt by others' prejudice?

* * *

What I did not know was what happened at his 21.  
21, for him, must have been the age of wounds and disappointment.

According to one of the seniors in my major and also a close Hyung, Wooyoung, Yeosang's friend stole a girl Yeosang had had a secret crush on. What's worse, he did it though he had already known that. The too kind and too naive boy, Yeosang did not attempt to determine what's right or wrong or to fight with him but just watched the way the couple walked together on campus, passively and sadly. "He still doesn't know that that fucking guy noticed that he'd had her in mind. So stupid." Wooyoung sighed.

Another worse thing happened without giving him no break to heal his wound.

His close senior who had already a boyfriend brought him to a bar, though she knew that Yeosang is such a weak-headed person who can be easily drunk even with a cup of soju. 

With a soft and gentle voice tone to be made for ostensibly comforting him, she offered several cups of soju. "Drink can be helpful to forget all the bad things." After making sure that Yeosang's drunk down to the ground, she took him to her house. 

In his hazy senses, what he could see on her bed was the naked senior. When she coming to him with her body lying prone, Yeosang tried to shake off her approaching hands that tried touching his whole body. "No, Sunbae, please..." In his words, the hands were too terrifying like the ones of a female ghost in a horror movie.

When finally seeing the tears in his eyes, she stopped with an angry face as if she's ridiculed by Yeosang. "Fuck, you can give me a chance to sleep with you! Why you acting like you've never had sex with a girl?" 

Yeosang told her he's never done so but she didn't believe it. "That's not possible for you. You know how handsome you are. It's really obvious that a huge number of girls must have fallen in love with you, whether you're intended or not. Didn't you really have a relationship with any girls who liked you?" He just nodded without a word like proving his innocence. She, making a smile, said, "If so, how about me?"

After that night that ended with Yeosang's flat rejection, he was hit by her boyfriend. "You did tempt my girlfriend yesterday, right?" "No, Sunbae, listen to me..." "Shut up! I am not an idiot who knows nothing! You must have thought your handsome face makes everything go as you want and can be the reason to be forgiven. But I'm not such a person who'll forgive you. Yeah, I'm not. You fucking idiot." His fist was beating Yeosang until his friends around him managed to stop him. "Fuck, piss off and never show up to me and my girlfriend!" He spitted to Yeosang.

Yeosang didn't know why she lied to her boyfriend that Yeosang himself had lured her. "Even now?" I asked. Wooyoung gave a nod. "Yup." "Oh, she did so because the things didn't go as she wanted!" I couldn't get a sense of how innocent and foolish he is. But soon I started to think about how much he's disappointed about human relationships. "He must have become afraid of making a friend." "Yeah, he's afraid of getting along with other people now like a deer hiding among the trees." I imagined a deer with big and luminous eyes hid inside bushes trembling with fear to be captured by hunters or predators. 

Can a brown bear and a deer be friends or a lover? In an ecosystem, a brown bear must eat a deer as its prey. But we're human who just resembles those animals. I was not a predator who would eat him and he's not also my prey. Again, I wanted to be a person who cared about his inner side.

* * *

21, not an age of perfect maturity but of a chance to be the mature adult who can protect someone from being wounded in his way.

Yeosang and I became members of the same group in a group project. That's obviously a chance to me to get along with him more, but also a misfortune that made him perplexed, because later I found that the senior who'd tried to lure him became the member as well. 'How can this fucking thing happen?' I mumbled inside, leering at her secretly during the group meeting held for assigning the tasks.

"Okay, most of the things seem to be decided. Who's gonna be a presenter? Anyone?" The group leader asked but nobody raised their hand. Suddenly, she looked at me and said, "How about Jongho? He has a loud voice to overwhelm the audience. I'm sure he'll play the role very well. Won't you?" She smiled like a kind person but as I knew what she'd done to Yeosang, of course, I felt so fucking bad. 

"But Mi-hee Sunbae has a clear and loud voice like a news announcer. I think she'll do better than me."   
"Oh, Jongho, I have already decided to do some research on the subject with Ye-eun."   
"You'll leave it all to her and do nothing because you enrolled this course only to earn some credits needed for graduation. Your grade in this course doesn't matter to you if you only avoid getting F! What have you done in this course? Did you submit an individual project on time? You said you didn't."   
"What the hell are you saying now? Did I? Well, okay, it's right but you should know that it was an inevitable thing because my uncle was sick..."  
"Was your uncle in a club?"  
"What?"  
"On that day I went to the club with my friends and I found you dancing with a man."  
"Oh, I don't understand what you are saying now. Don't be such a liar."  
"If anybody here asks one of your friends, it'll be more evident whether I am a liar or not."   
"Do you want a piece of me? Why are you doing this to me?"  
"Please stop! Oh, god, I don't know what's going on but if you two have to make a quarrel, get out of here! And Jongho, please take the role of a presenter. You'll do it well."  
"Ah, okay. Sorry, Seongjin Sunbae."  
When I was about to sit down, she grabbed my shoulder. "We should have a talk. Let's get out of here."

As she wanted, I went out of where the members were and to an empty lecture room.   
Crossing her arms, she asked with a sarcastic tone, "Do you know what the hell you've done? You insulted me in front of our members!"   
"Including the man you've insulted."   
"What?"  
"I know what you've done to Yeosang. What I've done to you can't be compared with it because yours was much worse and more insulting than mine."  
"Oh, you might hear that from Yeosang. But you're being fooled! He really tried to lure me to have sex with me."  
"That naive and innocent guy did so?"  
"Right."  
"You're rather lying to me now. You know how honest he is if you know him very well."  
"Yeah, but there's no perfect human being in the world. No matter how honest he is, there're some times he has to lie to conceal his fault."  
"You don't know how childlike he is. He's not such an elaborate person. Oh, then, if he were so, he would know how to make you his without being hit by your boyfriend. But he didn't. Why?"  
"How can I know that? Anyway, the obvious thing is that his temptation was totally no use because I'm not a person who is easily attracted by his handsomeness."  
"If you so, why did you try to tempt him?"  
"Fuck, I said I didn't!"  
"Oh, you'd better tell me the truth."

Sometimes my mother puts an apple in my bag when I skip breakfast in the morning. That day was the day and I could take out an apple from my bag. "What are you doing now?"

There's no need to use my all power to split the apple into two pieces. Watching all the things, she, with a shocked look, stared at my big hands a little wet with flowing apple juice.

"It's not difficult to make you like this apple."  
"......"  
"And I know you broke up with your boyfriend a few days ago. Yes, the man who hit Yeosang. If there's not your boyfriend, who will protect you?"  
"......"  
"If you trick with me, I'll tell everyone what I know about you."  
She was almost crying. "Do you think what you heard about me is all true?"  
"Yeosang is not a liar. The probability that he lies about you is the same level as the one he tells he doesn't like the seasoned spicy chicken."  
"I said you're being fooled by that idiot."  
"Yeah, he's an idiot. He's stupid. You know that well. So he can't lie."  
"Fuck..."

I threw out the apple pieces to her. She looked at them and me alternatively. "Keep your mouth shut and don't think about bullying that idiot or me. You are no more than like this apple."   
"What the fuck is he to you? Are you his boyfriend?"

My answer was, "No, but I'm no less than that position."

* * *

Making a PPT was Yeosang's task but he's not good at doing it. As if it had been necessary to help him, on Friday, I stayed in the school computer room with him until dinner time came. 

"Aren't you hungry?" Yeosang asked.   
"So am I. What about eating your favorite food?"  
"The seasoned spicy chicken!" He shouted with joy.

We ordered a delivery service and, after finishing half of the work, we went to an empty lecture room. Before sitting beside me, Yeosang suddenly groped in his opened bag. "I want to give you something." "What is it?"

What he took out was 9 coupons of the same chicken restaurant. I couldn't say anything for a while. "Well, I heard from Wooyoung that you..ah...b, beat the daylights out of her yesterday...I'm giving these as a token of thanks. These are really, really precious to me because I can eat the chicken for free if I get one more. Take it."

I gently cupped his hands like doing it to a little bird. "Can I take this?"   
"Yeah.."  
"Thanks. But keep it please and when you get one more, let's eat it for free another day."  
"....Really?"  
"Yeah."  
He finally showed me a smile as bright as a star in the night sky. "I'll do."  
"Instead, can you listen to me?"  
"Of course. Tell me."

"You remember that I've said I love your naivety and love your all. Those are the unchangeable things in my mind. Yeosang Sunbae, no, Yeosang, I want to care your everything whenever you are hurt by someone. No, I want to protect you from everything that can hurt you. Can I do so for you?"  
"Of course...Why you ask me?" He asked like he didn't know anything. Oh, god. How innocent and naive he is!  
"It's because..."

My phone rang. It's from a delivery man. He made a phone call as he didn't find where we were.

Rather than eating the chicken, what I did was watching him eat it up. "Won't you eat?" Having some amount of red sauce on his lips, he offered a chicken leg to me. "It's my favorite but I'll yield it to you. Eat it." I couldn't reject his goodwill because I knew well that it's a genuinely sincere one.

"I want to ask you something."  
"What is it?"  
"Am I looking terrifying to you?"  
"You?"  
"Yes."  
"No, why do I have to think you so? I'm not afraid of you."  
"Then, how do I look to you?"  
"Umm...a brown teddy bear?"  
"A teddy bear?"  
"A teddy bear with a big power."  
"Why do you think so?"  
"Because...umm...you're always good to me? And you said you'll protect me. You're like a teddy bear I used to hug before sleeping when I was young. I used to feel relaxed whenever I hugged it."  
"You do so even now?"  
"Not now. I'm an adult."

Even though he said, "I'm an adult", he would never know that I thought him as a child who still needed to be taken care of.

Something came into my sight. A coupon under the packing box. While he went to a toilet, I pulled it out and took out a pen from my pencil case. Writing something on the backside of the coupon, I felt like being afloat in the air by the heart's unstoppable fluttering.

* * *

Walking on the school road to go home, I heard Yeosang calling my name loud. I looked back at him and watched him running to me. When our distance got so close that I could see his face clearly under the street light, as if I didn't know nothing, I asked composedly, "Why do you come here? You said there are still some works you have to do." Breathing hard, he handed something to me, the coupon. I, with no words, received it. "Thanks."

He said aloud, "Read the backside, please. I have to go back right now. Bye-bye!"

His back was getting away from me so quickly. I turned the coupon over. Above my 'Would you be mine?' was his answer written in somewhat bad handwriting. 

'Will you like me as much as I like the seasoned spicy chicken? If you so, I will think about being yours.'

21, a timely age for falling in love.

**Author's Note:**

> [tumblr](https://loafer23.tumblr.com)  
> Thanks! :)


End file.
